Center of Attention: A True Crime Memoir


Jami D. Brown Martin - 2020
    The photo looks completely out of place on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list where it’s been since December, 8, 2007. For eight of those years, Jason appeared directly beside Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is long gone, but Jason is still wanted for armed robbery and murder.For years, his sister, Jami D. Brown Martin has watched the true crime programs and read the amateur investigative blogs devoted to Jason, his crime, and the efforts to apprehend him knowing the story wasn’t as simple, nor was it just Jason’s. To be the sister, brother, or relative of one of the world’s most wanted men is to live every day with the horrible truth and many consequences of his brutal act.CENTER OF ATTENTION is the story of a former Mormon missionary turned murderer. It is also a riveting look behind the facade of the genetically blessed, seemingly prominent and pious Brown family of Laguna Beach, California. It is a tale of the family patriarch, John Brown, who disappeared without a trace ten years before his son. More important, it is the gripping and ultimately hopeful story of the sister of one of the world’s most wanted fugitives and her journey to accept that despite being a product of the same crazy environment as her brother, her life and path are her own.

Nurses On The Inside: Stories Of The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In NYC


Ellen Matzer - 2019
    It is the story of two nurses who witnessed the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the frontline. It focuses on their lives and their experiences. Some of the story is raw, sometimes graphic, but familiar for people with HIV infection, family members, friends, and other nurses and medical professionals such as Ellen and Valery. There were hundreds of nurses who went through what Ellen and Valery experienced. They want to tell this story to give a voice to a generation lost, encouraging the world to remember one simple thing: this history cannot be repeated.

Better Late Than Never: From Barrow Boy to Ballroom


Len Goodman - 2009
    Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

Struck: A Husband’s Memoir of Trauma and Triumph


Douglas Segal - 2018
    Miraculously, his daughter was unharmed, but his wife faced a series of life-threatening injuries, including the same one that famously left Christopher Reeve paralyzed. Following the accident, Segal began sending regular email updates to their circle of friends and family—a list that continued to grow as others heard of the event and were moved by the many emotional and spiritual issues it raised. Segal's compelling memoir is an intimate and honest chronicle built around these email updates, and is a profound example of how people show up for one another in times of crisis.Alternatingly harrowing, humorous, heartbreaking, and hopeful, this is an uplifting tribute to love, determination, and how the compassion of community holds the power to heal, serving as an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit when faced with pain and adversity.

Raising A Thief


Paul Podolsky - 2020
    

Get Divorced, Be Happy: How becoming single turned out to be my happily ever after


Helen Thorn - 2021
    Helen shares her own roller coaster journey from the initial shock of a surprise separation, the messy months hanging out in her PJs through to the highs of rediscovering online dating, tiny pants, rock-solid female friendships and the glorious joy of just being by herself.With the help of relationship experts and an army of women "who know", Get Divorced, Be Happy will show you that going it alone isn't the end, it is just the beginning, and you will come out the other side, stronger, happier and goddamn sassier than ever before.

ER DOC: Defining Moments of a Career in Emergency Medicine


Reggie Duling - 2021
    

Exodus, Revisited: My Unorthodox Journey to Berlin


Deborah Feldman - 2021
    She was determined to find a better life for herself, away from the oppression and isolation of her Satmar upbringing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And in Exodus, Revisited she delves into what happened next--taking the reader on a journey that starts with her beginning life anew as a single mother, a religious refugee, and an independent woman in search of a place and a community where she can belong. Originally published in 2014, Deborah has now revisited and significantly expanded her story, and the result is greater insight into her quest to discover herself and the true meaning of home. Travels that start with making her way in New York expand into an exploration of America and eventually lead to trips across Europe to retrace her grandmother's life during the Holocaust, before she finds a landing place in the unlikeliest of cities. Exodus, Revisited is a deeply moving examination of the nature of memory and generational trauma, and of reconciliation with both yourself and the world.

Hiding from Myself


Bryan Christopher - 2014
    This book will stay with me the rest of my life. ...I wish this book could be distributed to every church and made required reading." Amazon Reviewer AndreamsCan a gay person change--with the help of Hugh Hefner and Jesus Christ? Few social issues ignite such passion from all sides. For those who see homosexuality as immoral and a sin, the notion of "gay marriage" is intolerable. For those who are gay, being demonized and shamed is simply intolerant. Bryan Christopher's life has been spent straddling this great divide.As a boy raised under the blinding Friday Night Lights of the Bible belt of Texas--from the playground to the pulpit--one message was clear: "queers" deserved to be smeared. And at the dawn of puberty, Bryan knew he was in trouble: he was staring limply at the pages of his dad's Playboy. That's when the hiding began. And in his neck of the woods, it left him with one option: change! "Hiding from Myself: A Memoir" chronicles the author's zealous crusade: from ringing doorbells for Jesus in the Castro of San Francisco to sorting through Hugh Hefner's dirty laundry as a butler at the Playboy Mansion; from the beer-soaked trenches of his UCLA fraternity house to wholehearted immersion into "ex-gay" conversion therapy.With this raw and moving testimony, the author offers healing and a fresh perspective on perhaps the most divisive cultural issue of our time. Bryan's story is not a "gay" story or even an "ex-gay" story; his is a human story--a testament to the innate universal need for love. And the things that can sometimes get in the way...

Chunk (Kindle Single)


Brian Donovan - 2015
    Chunk follows him along his crazy, overweight journey; from the chubby 10-year old who stole brownies and tricked his parents into thinking he’d lost weight, to the teenage boy who made regular after-school plans to eat entire pies, to the adult man who still hates working out and still loves Cinnabons. It’s a bracingly funny and delightfully uncomfortable collection of essays exploring food, fitness, and the funny things that happen when we try to slim down and grow up. Brian Donovan has written for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, National Public Radio, and, most recently, ABC’s The Neighbors. His work has also appeared on Chapelle’s Show, Funny or Die, and Off Broadway in New York City. His “Not a Match: My True Tales of Online Dating Disasters” is currently being developed for television. Cover design by Adil Dara.

The Fire She Set


Leigh Overton Boyd - 2020
    They did not talk about their mom's extended absences or why their dad put Scotch tape on the backdoor frame. To cover up the chaos, they kept their clothes neat and got good grades. But when they were teenagers, an arson fire destroyed their home and killed their parents. Rumors were thick that summer that smart, angry, fourteen-year-old Lisa set the blaze. Then, adult powers they did not understand squelched the investigation. As teenagers accustomed to keeping silent, they packed up and moved on.Forty years later, Leigh, the oldest, decided it was time to find out who killed their parents. She obtained copies of the police and fire investigations and began unwrapping the past. This memoir is the story of that investigation as Leigh tried to piece together the truth, but found more lies instead. With the help of her sisters, Leigh was able to reconstruct much of what happened to them in the beach towns around Atlantic City in the early 1970s. After the fire, one sister turned to heroin and another to alcohol; Leigh became Miss Atlantic City. Then, one by one, they each moved to California and shut the door on their past, even though they privately wondered whether one of them killed Frank and Nancy Overton. It's funny. They never wondered whether one of their parents was trying to kill them.

Twenty-Seven Years in Alaska: True Stories of Adventure in the Alaskan Wilderness


Jennifer Hellings - 2015
    From canoe camping next to unnamed lakes, to kayaking in Alaska’s pristine waters, she describes her many encounters with the bears, moose and other animals that make this wilderness their home. With her partner David she helped to build a cabin on a remote piece of property, off the grid and accessible only by boat. Illustrated with the photos she took along the way, her story is sometimes comic, and sometimes tragic, but throughout its pages she speaks with the voice of one who loves nature and the wilderness.

Wednesday's Children: The Memoirs of a Nurse-Turned-Social-Worker in Rural Appalachia


Kathryn Anne Michaels - 2018
    When a friend urges her to switch from nursing to paramedic medicine and child protection social work, Kate accepts the challenge and finds herself in an isolated rural area of the Appalachian Mountains.Here a new set of challenges await: technical cliff rescues and hikes into remote back-country “hollers” to remove child victims of sexual assault from their homes only to have an indifferent judge order them back the next day, and dealing with some of America’s poorest and most distrustful citizens.And from all appearances, and even though she’s white, former members of the Ku Klux Klan have just set her house on fire…Based on the memoirs of a registered nurse-turned-social worker, this is a tale of heartbreak and laughter, courage and cowardice seasoned with a candid look at the early days of social work and emergency rescue medicine that will both challenge and renew your faith in humanity.Warning: Some graphic content

A Girl Raised by Wolves: An inspiring memoir of one woman's journey through sex trafficking, cancer, murder and more.


Lockey Maisonneuve - 2018
    town, an adolescent girl is unwittingly handed a one-way ticket by her mother to allegedly "visit" her estranged father in Florida. Young and vulnerable, Lockey Maisonnueve has no idea she is being abandoned and sent to live with a vile and dangerous pedophile who would spend the next several years violently raping, abusing and mercilessly selling his daughter's body into childhood prostitution to other adult men. After being rescued by her naive, but well-intentioned, grandparents, her troubled life is further devastated by cancer and ravaged by the subsequent brutal murder of her mother, in which Lockey is briefly considered a suspect. "A Girl Raised by Wolves' is the inspirational memoir of a survivor of the darkest circumstances one can endure in a single lifetime and still emerge with a sense of humor and to defiantly proclaim "they didn't break me!"